Netflix doesn’t exactly have the greatest track record when it comes to producing quality feature-length films. I’m looking at you, movies like Me Time and The Man from Toronto — as well as The Last Days of American Crime, which had the unfortunate distinction of earning a rare 0% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. But even though so many of the streamer’s movies end up falling short, every now and then, subscribers get treated to a bona fide gem — and it looks like Netflix is about to do exactly that once again with the forthcoming Spellbound.
The thing that’s so exciting about this one is the top-tier talent involved, including some of the filmmakers behind animated classics like Shrek and Toy Story. Coming to Netflix on Nov. 22, Spellbound is an animated musical, and the music includes contributions from legendary composer Alan Menken — the award-winning composer of scores and songs for films like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.
The voice cast includes Nicole Kidman, Rachel Zegler, and Javier Bardem. Additionally, John Lasseter, who directed the original Toy Story movie, produced Spellbound along with Skydance founder David Ellison.
And perhaps speaking to the idea of this upcoming film already having touched something inside of viewers, it’s worth noting that the first teaser trailer that Netflix released this week (below) racked up more than 5 million views on YouTube in just 24 hours.
Beneath the magic and all the fantastical elements of Spellbound, Netflix explains, this is basically a modern story told within the trappings of a fairy tale. Spellbound director Vicky Jenson, who also directed the original Shrek, told Netflix’s Tudum site that: “If we start with the familiar — the kingdom, a princess, a king, a queen, and a spell — we could use that to express the story of this family.
“For me, the story is even more universal than the specifics of this family dynamic. For me, it speaks to kids and their parents, to the kind of alienation that can happen as we grow up, and the steps we have to make toward each other to weather it together and come through the other side with better understanding.”
The basic story involves the precocious Ellian, the young daughter of the rulers of Lumbria. She embarks on a daring quest to save not only her family but also her kingdom after a spell turns her parents into monsters (the parents, by the way, are voiced by Kidman and Bardem).
The allegory of parents who seem like monsters to a child certainly seems impossible to miss — but, as straightforward as the story sounds, Netflix has a history of turning pretty basic narrative material into animated gold. Reasons I’m hopeful about Spellbound include Netflix’s Orion and the Dark, Leo, and The Mitchells vs. the Machines. Major props to the streamer’s animated division.
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